With the increasing popularity of various wireless standards and technologies, there is a growing demand to provide a simple and complete solution for wireless communications applications. In this regard, electronics manufacturers are increasingly attempting to incorporate multiple wireless technologies into portable electronic devices. For example, wireless technologies that are seeing widespread deployment include FM radio, Bluetooth (BT), Global Positioning System (GPS), Wi-Fi, and radio-frequency identification (RFID).
Although desirable to users, incorporating multiple wireless communication technologies into devices such as wireless handsets may pose problems in terms of cost and complexity. In this regard, combining a plurality of wireless technologies into a portable electronic device may require separate processing hardware and/or separate processing software. Moreover, coordinating the reception and/or transmission of data to and/or from the portable electronic device may require significant processing overhead that may impose certain operation restrictions and/or design challenges. Additionally, the device may need to be highly configurable in order to reduce size and cost by sharing hardware.
As an example, consider integrating FM radio systems into a portable device such as a smart phone. In this regard, conventional FM broadcast radios have relatively large antennas, which may not be practical for incorporating into a device such as a smart phone. Accordingly, system designers are faced with the challenge of receiving a relatively broad FM broadcast band utilizing an antenna which is electrically very small. In this regard, it may be difficult to reliably and/or consistently match an FM broadcast radio to a relatively small antenna as is typically found in a portable wireless device. Furthermore, the frequency response of such an electrically small antenna may be incapable and or inefficient at receiving a broad frequency band, such as the FM broadcast band.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.